wiser if they did come:  and it’s such a capable kitchen—­there’s such dark corners in it—­I’d be bound to hide any one.  I counted up last Sunday night—­for I’ll not deny I was crying because I had to shut the door in Jem Hearn’s face, and he’s a steady young man, fit for any girl; only I had given missus my word.”  Martha was all but crying again; and I had little comfort to give her, for I knew, from old experience, of the horror with which both the Miss Jenkynses looked upon “followers”; and in Miss Matty’s present nervous state this dread was not likely to be lessened.

I went to see Miss Pole the next day, and took her completely by surprise, for she had not been to see Miss Matilda for two days.

“And now I must go back with you, my dear, for I promised to let her know how Thomas Holbrook went on; and, I’m sorry to say, his housekeeper has sent me word to-day that he hasn’t long to live.  Poor Thomas! that journey to Paris was quite too much for him.  His housekeeper says he has hardly ever been round his fields since, but just sits with his hands on his knees in the counting-house, not reading or anything, but only saying what a wonderful city Paris was!  Paris has much to answer for if it’s killed my cousin Thomas, for a better man never lived.”

“Does Miss Matilda know of his illness?” asked I—­a new light as to the cause of her indisposition dawning upon me.

“Dear! to be sure, yes!  Has not she told you?  I let her know a fortnight ago, or more, when first I heard of it.  How odd she shouldn’t have told you!”

Not at all, I thought; but I did not say anything.  I felt almost guilty of having spied too curiously into that tender heart, and I was not going to speak of its secrets—­hidden, Miss Matty believed, from all the world.  I ushered Miss Pole into Miss Matilda’s little drawing-room, and then left them alone.  But I was not surprised when Martha came to my bedroom door, to ask me to go down to dinner alone, for that missus had one of her bad headaches.  She came into the drawing-room at tea-time, but it was evidently an effort to her; and, as if to make up for some reproachful feeling against her late sister, Miss Jenkyns, which had been troubling her all the afternoon, and for which she now felt penitent, she kept telling me how good and how clever Deborah was in her youth; how she used to settle what gowns they were to wear at all the parties (faint, ghostly ideas of grim parties, far away in the distance, when Miss Matty and Miss Pole were young!); and how Deborah and her mother had started the benefit society for the poor, and taught girls cooking and plain sewing; and how Deborah had once danced with a lord; and how she used to visit at Sir Peter Arley’s, and tried to remodel the quiet rectory establishment on the plans of Arley Hall, where they kept thirty servants; and how she had nursed Miss Matty through a long, long illness, of which I had never heard before, but which I now dated in my own mind as following the dismissal of the suit of Mr Holbrook.  So we talked softly and quietly of old times through the long November evening.